Facebook Unveils Changes to Its News Feed

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, unveiled a new look for Facebook. How can you be among the first to experience it? WSJ's Jason Bellini has the "Short Answer".

By

Evelyn M. Rusli

Updated March 7, 2013 6:54 p.m. ET

MENLO PARK, Calif.— Facebook Inc.,FB-1.26% hoping to keep users logged on longer as it faces competition from myriad new social apps, is tweaking its news feed again.

Changes to the feed—the key channel on Facebook's service where users post and consume content—include a more minimal design, larger images and new types of sub-feeds. The revamp reflects a big push to prod users to spend more time on the site and curry favor with brands hoping to be noticed by Facebook's users.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, during a briefing at Facebook's headquarters here Thursday, repeatedly referred to the new design as the foundation for building the "best personalized newspaper."

Amid complaints of "Facebook Fatigue" the social media giant rolled out a new design. Quentin Fottrell reports. Photo: Facebook.

"It's easy to think about it as just a single stream of content, but our goal is a lot broader," Mr. Zuckerberg said, wearing his usual uniform of jeans and a zip-up gray hoodie.

As part of the redesign, friends' photos will now appear larger and shared articles will include bigger images, text and the logos of publishers.

For location check-ins, Facebook will feature a large map of destinations. For posts about business, users will see their cover pages and pictures of friends who have "liked" the business, in the social network's parlance.

Facebook, which is making the design consistent across desktop and mobile devices, also said it would give users access to new cuts of their feed—such as the ability to see all the posts from their friends, all the most recent posts, or streams based around interests, such as music.

The changes highlight the immense challenge for Facebook, as it tries to shore up its stock price while satisfying all the players of its ecosystem: its users, developers and advertisers.

Some analysts were skeptical that the changes will help brands get people to pay more attention to their ads or pages. "There could be a short-term increase in engagement for all posts," said Rey Flemings, CEO of Stipple, a digital-advertising business that helps companies build interactive ads. "But it doesn't address the fundamental problem that ads will still be seen as interrupting the news feed."

The changes come as Facebook faces rising competition on mobile devices from applications that threaten to lure people away from the giant social network. In a short span of time, new messaging applications, like WhatsApp, have become popular communication hubs on cellphones with millions of users. There is also mounting concern that Facebook is losing the intangible "cool" factor among teenagers and younger children, who may be seeking new outlets to communicate with their peers.

Facebook's shares rose 4.1%, or $1.13, to close at $28.58 on the Nasdaq Stock MarketNDAQ0.08% Thursday after the announcement. But the stock is still trading about 25% lower than its initial public offering last May.

In recent months, Facebook has faced criticism that it has too much power in determining what a user sees in the news feed, which is determined by a constantly changing algorithm that shows users some but not all content available.

On Digits

By offering users an option to see all recent activity, Facebook is partially reverting to a feature that it had eliminated years ago, when users could easily toggle back and forth between the news feed and a stream of all activity.

Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product, acknowledged during an interview that the company added the news-feed cuts, in part, as a response to the criticism. Mr. Cox said Facebook was trying to address the tension between users who were complaining about too many posts and publishers, who wanted users to see every post they created. "These two things are irreconcilable," he said.

For Facebook, the hope is that by slashing clutter and making content more aesthetically pleasing, users will spend more minutes on the site, clicking through on stories and exploring both the main news-feed channel, and the sub-feeds that appeal to their particular interests. Increased user activity is the key to satisfying partners, including advertisers who need to deliver richer ads and developers who will get more interactions from users.

The average user on Facebook spends about six hours every month on Facebook's desktop site, while mobile users spend nearly 12 hours on the application, according to recent data from researcher comScore Inc.SCOR2.52%

Richard Greenfield, BTIG analyst, said it was far too early to tell how the new redesign would impact ads, especially on mobile devices. "We didn't see how advertising plays into this," said Mr. Greenfield, "The question is: how many ads and what will they look like."

Facebook will begin rolling out the new design for the Web, starting Thursday, and will soon push it to mobile devices.

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